


Once More, With Feeling!

by Empyrian



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, What if NG+ was canon?, less shippy, more plot heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:29:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24235816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empyrian/pseuds/Empyrian
Summary: What would you do if you could return to the most important decision in your life, knowing what you know now, and try to do it different? Or, Byleth gets a do-over.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Kudos: 27





	Once More, With Feeling!

Byleth von Hresvelg, née Eisner stirred slightly in bed, one hand lazily patting around the left side, where her wife Edelgard most often slept. Her questing digits returned no quarry, however, and so she spoke.

“El?”

There was no response. Byleth could see no light streaming in through the window that would indicate morning had come, which made her all the more suspicious. Edelgard had come to bed with her, she could prove that by way of a daringly conspicuous set of teeth-marks on her shoulder. But what reason could she have for leaving her bed in the middle of the night?

It had been five years since the Battle of Fhirdiad, and Byleth herself had since felt no need to involve herself directly in the occasional skirmishes from leftover Alliance and Kingdom loyalists that would crop up around the Empire. Still, a lifetime of mercenary work, followed by teaching the art of war, followed by leading troops under the Imperial banner had instilled in her a combat instinct and sense for danger that had never totally gone away. This instinct prevented panic when she looked to the intricately carved mounting board on which Aymr usually rested, and found it to be absent.

Byleth sat up quickly, rolling out of bed and reaching for the wooden box she kept underneath her and Edelgard’s bed. It always paid to be prepared, after all, and nobody knew this better than her. She withdrew a long well-maintained steel longsword from the box first, and set it atop the bed while she pulled out a set of comfortable clothes and boots. No armor, but something better to fight in than a nightgown, should the need arise. She dressed quickly, in the dark, her training guiding her and keeping her from worrying about Edelgard. She was the Emperor of Adrestia, she had united the land beneath her rule by her own hand, she could handle things just fine on her own. At least, that’s what Byleth told herself.

She stood up straight after dressing and grabbed the sword, holding it backhanded and slipping out of the room, quietly.

It occurred to her that it was possible Edelgard had left the room for a late night snack, as she was sometimes wont to do, and Byleth would be seen by a guard acting quite silly. 

But then, she thought, what about Aymr?

Byleth crept through the halls of the Imperial Palace, trying her best to stick to corners where she wasn’t likely to be seen. She made certain the sword she carried didn’t touch any stone surfaces where it might make noise, and her boots thumped almost silently on the floor as she moved.

It didn’t take her long to hear the sounds of combat. It was enough to make her pale, even after all this time, to bear witness to such things in the halls of the palace.

As she rounded the fifth or sixth corner, she drew back, sucking in a breath as she nearly tripped on the armored body of one of the palace guards. The man laid on the ground, pale, bloodless, but certainly dead. No wounds, no burns, no lacerations, no frostbite, so the only possible culprit was dark magic. The implication hit Byleth like a cart of bricks. 

Those Who Slither in the Dark had returned tonight, to finish what they had started years ago.

She peered around the corner and saw several other guards laying about on the floor, bodies strewn like childrens’ toys that hadn’t been returned to their box. Byleth took one cautious step, after examining her surroundings and finding that there were no living people in the hallway. Continuing to approach the din up ahead, she felt herself growing more apprehensive. She occasionally did combat drills when Ferdinand or Caspar would ask her to, more for the troops’ morale than anything else. Would that be enough? Had she grown too lazy, too lax to fight like she once had? 

Byleth banished the thoughts from her mind. Focus.

The fighting seemed to be taking place in one of the palace courtyards. Sure enough, her wife stood, shouting commands to several of the guards, helping keep ranks firm, filling gaps whenever a guard would stumble. Even with no armor, fighting in simple pants and shirt, Edelgard was an absolute force of nature on the battlefield. She spun Aymr around with the grace and finesse that a rogue would twirl a simple dagger, and the bodies on the ground closest to her were not the bodies of her compatriots. Apparently sensing motion, Edelgard turned to look at her wife.

“You, shore up the left side, one of the others fell and we’re- wait, Byleth? You...I left you in bed for a reason!” Edelgard seemed legitimately shocked to see Byleth standing in the hallway. “We can handle this, I need you to go get Hubert. If he’s not already fighting somewhere, I need him here.”

Byleth flipped her sword so that it was point-forward, and shook her head. She would have to remember to be offended later that Edelgard had left her behind as though she were too delicate to fight. “I’m staying right here with you. Hubert is a light sleeper, he’ll already be doing something important. Besides, we fight well together.”

Edelgard hesitated. Why was she trying to keep Byleth from the fray?

“Okay. With me, then. Watch over me, my teacher.” Edelgard turned back to the battlefield, but Byleth thought she could see a hint of uncertainty on her wife’s face. Pushing her emotions aside, Byleth joined the group in the courtyard and began to fight.  
The group of soldiers seemed as though they were unending. It was strange, and more than a little worrying, she thought to herself as she cut down yet another of the assassins. There were easily a dozen of their bodies in this courtyard, and yet they kept approaching from the hall on the other side. Anytime one was cut down, another would rush in to take their place. How many were there? And how had they gotten inside? 

Byleth was snapped from her reverie when she heard Edelgard cry out from her right side. She spun on the ball of her foot and put her sword in a guarding stance behind her while she checked on her wife. Her stomach lurched as she saw an arrow sticking out of Edelgard’s shoulder. But there was something strange about it. It almost seemed as though the arrow was...glowing, with a dark sort of light. 

Byleth dashed toward Edelgard, faster than she knew she could move, as her wife stumbled backward. It was only an arrow, and she knew El had taken harder hits than this before. Something was very, very wrong. 

Edelgard gasped, as if she were straining to breathe, and fell to her knees, panting quietly. She tried to sit backward and scoot away from the fight, where a couple of guards were holding the enemies back, but her arm gave out beneath her and she hit the ground, hard.

“No. No no no. Not here. Not tonight.” Byleth pleaded with any God or Goddess willing to listen. “Not her, not now, not her.”

She slid to her knees next to her wife and put her hand around the arrow wound, holding the shaft between her fingers to keep everything steady. “El, I need you to breathe, okay? Focus on breathing. I don’t know what this arrow is doing, but I need you to try to stay calm.”

Edelgard raised a hand and pointed, almost lazily, at something off to the side. Byleth ignored her. She could still hear the guards fighting and she knew they would handle things. She needed to help Edelgard. Byleth took her wife’s hand and squeezed, trying to keep tears from springing to her eyes. “It’s okay, El, you’re fine, this is absolutely nothing. We’ll get a healer over here and-”

Byleth was cut short as she felt a dull thump against her back, followed by a strange throbbing sensation in her chest. She watched Edelgard’s eyes go wide with horror and looked down to see the end of a blade protruding from her own body. The world around them seemed to slow to a complete stop, and there was only Byleth and Edelgard. 

She met her wife’s terrified eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but there was only a soft wheeze, a cough, a spatter of blood against the ground. Black velvet curtains began to close in around the edges of her vision and the last thing she saw was El, her mouth moving as though in slow motion, forming just one word.

“Byleth!”

***

“Byleth. Byleth! Get up!” 

Jeralt’s voice was urgent, but not panicked. Her father was never panicked, or at least, she’d never seen him that way. It took her a moment to register what he was saying.

“El...?” she mumbled softly, before shaking her head. No, not El. Was she dreaming? Was this a hallucination? She opened her eyes and gaped at what she saw.

Jeralt loomed over her and for a moment, she almost yelped as though she had seen a ghost. Her hand snapped up and grabbed the front of his tunic, reassuring herself that he was real. She looked around the room, taking in her surroundings and assessing them carefully. She was in a tent that felt... vaguely familiar. Not Enbarr, not the palace, and most certainly not in bed next to her wife.

“Whoa, hey, hold on there kiddo, are you okay? I don’t think I’ve seen you this excited since...well...ever?”

The reality of what she was seeing finally hit her and she looked her father in the eye. She felt her own eyes begin to prickle with tears as she beheld his kind, but worried face.

“Father?”

“Uh. Yes?”

Byleth sat bolt upright and yanked him down to her level, wrapping her arms around his armored torso and squeezing as tightly as she could in a hug. After a moment, the events of the night came rushing back to her all at once. The blade, the arrow, the assassins. 

“Am...I dead? Are we dead?”

Jeralt looked at her, clearly befuddled. “No, kid, wake up. We’re in camp just outside a village near the Garreg Mach monastery. What’s gotten into you?”

She paused for a moment to regain her composure, and considered the possibilities. She was either dead or dying, and this was some kind of pre-death hallucination or afterlife. That didn’t seem likely, though.

Byleth remembered, then, the ability that had shown itself after she had first spoken with Sothis, more than a decade ago. 

The first night she’d met Edelgard, and saved her from a bandit’s axe by stopping time for everyone but herself, and rewinding it while keeping her knowledge of what was to occur. She had also noticed that the strange power would manifest, on its own, whenever she was in mortal peril in battle. It had kept her alive more than once during the war, almost like the power had a survival instinct of its own. 

What if the power had reacted to her being attacked in the palace and rewound her own personal timeline further than ever before. Back to before the war, and before her father was killed by an assassin. Back to that first night. That would mean-

“Sir!”

Her train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of one of her father’s mercenaries. The man saluted briefly after Jeralt turned to regard him.

“What’s your report, soldier?” her father asked. It made Byleth feel warm to hear his voice again. Time had dulled the pain somewhat, but she had missed him every single day.

“Sir, there are two young men and one young woman approaching the camp. They appear to be wearing Garreg Mach officer’s academy uniforms.”

“Garreg Mach, eh?” Jeralt asked, thoughtfully. “Well, we had better go and see what they want. Are you okay, kid? Do you need to sit this one out?”

Byleth’s heart pounded, feeling as if it was going to explode out of her chest. What would happen? She racked her memories. What could she change? What could she do differently if she had a chance? She reached decisively for her sword belt and her combat garb.

“No. I’m coming.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Catch me at @empyrian_author on twitter for more updates as we move forward. Leave a comment below, they sustain me.


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